Lux Perpetua
by Metonomia
Summary: For NFFR's Fall Challenge: Of the Lamppost, and the girl who comes to be associated with it. Lucy in 1000 words.


Lux Perpetua

_Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,_

_et lux perpetua luceat eis._ (1)

"One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying." (2)

* * *

The Lamppost did not feel in the way that a creature of breath and blood did, but it was as charmed and loved as they, a part of the Lion's creation and endowed with a certain intelligence that clung to the land and growth of the First Song. As centuries flew by and forests grew up around it, fell, and rose again, it alone remained. When the Tree of Protection withered, the iron stood strong, defying the advances of the Witch, who for all her strength could not uproot this post. She passed it by, and the winter rose around the grove now called Lantern Waste, and the light lost its luster against the harsh brightness of the snow.

Sometimes, when a particularly strong wind etched dark scars into its shirt of frost, the Lamppost remembered the cold woman-who-was-not-a-woman. Grown anew it still felt, somewhere in the everlasting flame, the wrenching tear as she pulled it from the London ground. It sputtered a little recalling how its base had struck the Creator even as He sang the magic which gave the Lamppost the spark of life it retained, but it never went out.

The first touch of that tiny blessed hand awoke more in the Lamppost than anything since the Creation. A fresh thread of magic wove through the still-frozen metal, and it could feel now the joy of the small Human girl who gazed about in wonderment even as the Lamppost wondered at her. This little creature, a rarity not sensed in Narnia for more than a century, was everything that the cold woman was not. The Lamppost could not see her, but it sensed the excitement that pinked her cheeks, and the sparkle of life that blazed out from her warm eyes. It shone a little brighter, just for her, pouring every memory of the Lion into its flame for this child who was so clearly, even to a Lamppost, everything that Narnia needed most.

* * *

She was the Valiant Queen, and lived that fiercely and proudly, a lioness who loved and protected her lambs. Throughout the first summer and fall, all four rode out on campaign together, and Lucy was the one who did not fight, remaining in camp, cordial in hand and heart thudding, waiting for the others to return. Then, in the winter court season, Susan was told that she was too delicate and precious to fight, and besides, proper ladies minded the hearth, not the hunt. So Lucy, lacking the grace and strength that allowed her sister to step aside and turn from bow-strings to tapestries, took up arms and refused to stay home. She fought, and won, and when Peter knighted her in a blood-soaked field strewn with the bodies from which she had claimed the life, she refused to hear the protests of those who called her savage and improper. Instead she rode back to the Cair, and still dressed in her torn chainmail, the scarlet of her blood mixing into that of her clothes, her golden hair a tangled, muddy halo, she in turn knighted Susan.

They named her Lucy of the Cordial, for by the gift of Father Christmas she was the healer-angel of the land. Forbidden to use the precious cordial on every hurt, she learned by painful loss how to bind any cut, set any limb, and suck out any poison. Dancing through life even amid war, she taught those whose hearts had been long frozen how to laugh. Mothers cried her name when their children lay sick, telling them to be like Lucy, to have faith in their queen's Lion. Soldiers prayed that they might see her, golden-haired and all in white, a goddess more than a queen, soaring untouched through battle to soothe away their agony. She was the invocation of every Narnian, a living token of their Creator's loving light, and a promise of peaceful rest at the end of strife. They did not know how she cried over all the babes from whom she could not take the fever, how she cursed when infections set in, or how they healed her as much as she healed them.

She was called Lady of the Sea and Queen of the East, and spent at least half of her second Narnian summer in the waters off the Cair, learning just how Dolphins spoke and how sand begat glass, wishing she had the strong, shining fins of the Mer-folk. Her flag flew below the Lion rampant on every Narnian ship, and hers was the honor of naming every new vessel. She spent her first trip across to Galma draped across the starboard bow, watching blessed land fade away as the contents of her stomach made their vicious reappearance. Years later, she uncorked her cordial to fix Eustace's sea-sickness, and when Edmund turned his back, swiftly tilted the bottle to her own trembling lips.

They came to call her the Lightkeeper, and of all her names this one, only learned of centuries later, was the one Lucy liked best. Edmund got the Table, for all that she and Susan were the ones who were actually there, and she could never begrudge him that, so her own tradition was to visit the Lamppost each year on the great anniversary. No one really understood at first. Her siblings all assumed – correctly – that it had something to do with Aslan, but they did not understand why the Lamppost. She was not looking to their coronation, as most of their subjects thought, nor was she remembering her first friends in Narnia, a dear notion that she could not take away from Mr. Tumnus. Lucy, the Light of Narnia, came to the Lamppost every year on the day and at the very place that she had first felt Aslan's presence. And when she heard that the Narnians remembered this about her above all else, she felt again the spark of warm love from the moment a little girl first touched a Lamppost.

* * *

(1) "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,

and let perpetual light shine upon them."

From the Introit of the Requiem Mass of the Roman Catholic Church – I was heavily inspired for this one-shot by a song adapted from the Requiem Mass by Ricky Manalo, called "Pie Jésu." The somber aspect of the song – it's mainly for funerals – has little bearing on the story, but it's what I was listening to when I was inspired to add Lucy to the Lamppost.

(2) Attributed to Joan of Arc – credit to Fierce Queen for the idea of Lucy as a sort of Joan of Arc which contributed to my portrayal of her in this piece.

Also, huge thanks to the ladies of AsCast, whose discussion in Episode 6 (go listen) directly inspired Lucy being a Knight of Narnia.

Finally – this story is for NFFR's Autumn Fic Challenge, the theme of which is the lamppost. Check out the website, come chat in the forum, vote in the 2009 Revolution Awards, and listen to AsCast!


End file.
